Modifications to the Google Books Settlement — Last year, we joined with a broad class of authors and publishers to announce a settlement agreement that would make millions of out-of-print books available to students and readers in every part of the U.S., while forging new opportunities for rightsholders to sell access to their books.

Terms of Digital Book Deal With Google Revised — SAN FRANCISCO — Google and groups representing book publishers and authors filed a modified version of their controversial books settlement with a federal court on Friday. The changes would pave the way for other companies …

Google: Firms can ‘get rid’ of Office in a year — SINGAPORE—In a year, most enterprises will have the choice to “get rid of [Microsoft] Office if they chose to”, suggests Dave Girouard, president of Google's enterprise division. — Girouard, one of the company's four presidents including …

Google: Page Speed May Become a Ranking Factor in 2010 — Algorithm Change Would Make Slow Sites Rank Lower — Over the course of 2009, a consistent theme that Google has been involved with is that of speed. In announcement after announcement, Google has talked about the importance of speed on the web …

RIM takes smartphone fight to rivals — Jim Balsillie headed to San Francisco Bay Area conference to try and prove the BlackBerry can keep up with its U.S. competition — Personal Tech - Back to School Laptop Guide - The Download Decade - Browse the Windows 7 section

Fox News Declares Cyberwar on Liberal Blogosphere — How do you annoy the maximum number of Liberal blogs with minimal effort? If you're Fox News, all you have to do is shut down the YouTube channel that supplies them with infuriating O'Reilly Factor clips. They did this today!

On Middle Men — The Internet has been incredibly empowering to creators, and just as destructive to middle men. In the 20th century, every musician needed a record label to get his or her music heard. Every author needed a publishing house to be read. Every journalist needed a newspaper.

Don't make me a target — The augmented reality view in Brightkite's mobile app. — Brightkite, a location-tracking service, recently launched version 2.0 of their service after merging with Limbo and taking $9M in funding this past April. — In recent months I've found myself using Foursquare …

Second Life Founder Launching Reputation Currency System — Six years after creating Second Life, Philip Rosedale announced that he would be focusing on a new project. Shrouded in mystery, the Linden Chairman and fellow Lindenite Ryan Downe began work in October on Love Machine Inc …

A Later Ship Date For Nook — If you want to put a Nook electronic-book reader under the tree, you'd better move fast — very fast. … Barnes & Noble's Web site now says that new orders are expected to be shipped on Dec. 18, in time to make Christmas delivery.

Running a contest on Facebook? That'll cost you — For Madison Avenue, Facebook just got a little less free. — Last week, the massive social network announced that brands, advertisers, and marketers that want to run contests or sweepstakes on its platform have to go through an approval process first.

Is Dell's Android Smartphone Doomed? — Dell confirmed it is releasing an Android-based smartphone, called the Mini 3, in China and Brazil, but the company's lack of details about the handset makes it hard to get excited. Dell's unwillingness to share more about the Mini 3 also has me wondering …

When A Call From Maine Leads To A $9M Funding In Florida — Sometimes cold calls do pay off - even in venture capital. … Voxeo Corp., which provides Internet and voice communications services, said today it raised $9 million in Series A financing from Maine-based North Atlantic Capital and the newly formed Florida Growth Fund.

WHERE helps us track DROID infestation, sales numbers — The folks over at uLocate, makers of the popular GPS-centric WHERE application, have come through with some stats in order to help us better track the DROID as it leaves store shelves...and there's a map for that. Oh irony.

Summary Bit.ly Stats — For a long time, our users have been requesting summarized views of their click data. Today, we have taken the first in a series of steps to expose a summary of data across all of your Bit.ly links. — At the top of your Bit.ly history, you'll see a small chart displaying …